St Paul Central’s cross country running team was pretty good back in the day. Not great, but pretty good. The team had a number of varsity runners who didn’t define themselves runners, but ran as a fall sport while waiting for XC Ski, Hockey, Cycling, or Golf seasons to come around. We were good enough to place third at state my senior year, but we were absolutely crushed by Minneapolis South’s running team comprised of actual runners.
Our high school coach was a middle school teacher who commutted over to Central for practices after school. This gave us plenty of time to get changed and still have time to kill before he got there.
I can’t remember who, but someone started bringing a hacky sack to practice, so the team started killing time by the parking lot in a circle kicking the bag around.
Over time, this evolved into a modified game. We pivoted from trying to see how many kicks we could get before someone missed to Death By Hacky. For those not familiar with this regional game, the rules are pretty simple: as soon as three unique people have kicked the Hacky Sack, anyone can grab the bag out of the air and whip it as hard as they can at anyone in the game.
This did lead to some welts, but it also developed a level of agility not seen in many cross country runners. Long distance runners are good at one thing: running in a straight line for a long time. The skills needed to avoid getting hit by thrown Hacky Sack at short distance are valuable skills, and transferrable to snowball fights and other acts of self-preservation.
Our team also had very few injuries. While we weren’t following a structured warm-up routine, we were warming up and strengthening the foot and ankle muscles that provide stability to avoid ankle rolls on uneven terrain.
But, the longest lasting and most valuable skill that came out of those seasons is the Hacky Save. Being able to intuitively react to falling objects by lifting a foot to catch and lower an object to the ground has paid dividends.
Who knew that a skill developed before cell phones would become one of the most important skills for preventing cracked screens? Several salsa and jelly jars have been saved due to ingrained hackey moves. Countless cookies haven’t crumbled thanks to falling objects triggering an impulsive flow state.
Hacky develops Doppler radar for feet.
Accidentally training for adulthood has paid dividends. The day will come when I’ll be in a wheelchair, finding myself texting an old teammate to share a story about my latest Hacky Save.
